Virtualized partitionable shared network interface

ABSTRACT

A network system having a plurality of processing partitions which includes a network interface unit coupled to a plurality of processing entities is disclosed. The network interface unit includes a plurality of memory access channels. The plurality of memory access channels is virtualized. The network interface unit is shared among the plurality of processing partitions.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to networking and more particularly to avirtualized partitionable shared network interface.

2. Description of the Related Art

In known networked computer systems, the network interface functionalityis treated and supported as an undifferentiated instance of a generalpurpose Input Output (I/O) interface. This treatment is because computersystems are optimized for computational functions, and thus networkingspecific optimizations might not apply to generic I/O scenarios. Ageneric I/O treatment results in no special provisions being made tofavor network workload idiosyncrasies. Known networked computer systemsinclude platform servers, server based appliances and desktop computersystems.

Known specialized networking systems, such as switches, routers, remoteaccess network interface units and perimeter security network interfaceunits include internal architectures to support their respective fixedfunction metrics. In the known architectures, low level packetprocessing is segregated to separate hardware entities residing outsidethe general purpose processing system components.

The system design tradeoffs associated with networked computer systems,just like many other disciplines, include balancing functionalefficiency against generality and modularity. Generality refers to theability of a system to perform a large number of functional variants,possibly through deployment of different software components into thesystem or by exposing the system to different external workloads.Modularity refers to the ability to use the system as a subsystem withina wide array of configurations by selectively replacing the type andnumber of subsystems interfaced.

It is desirable to develop networked systems that can provide highfunctional efficiencies while retaining the attributes of generality andmodularity. Networked systems are generally judged by a number ofefficiencies relating to network throughput (i.e., the aggregate networkdata movement ability for a given traffic profile), network latency(i.e., the system contribution to network message latency), packet rate(i.e., the system's upper limit on the number of packets processed pertime unit), session rate (i.e., the system's upper limit on creation andremoval of network connections or sessions), and networking processingoverhead (i.e., the processing cost associated with a given networkworkload). Different uses of networked systems are more or lesssensitive to each of these efficiency aspects. For example, bulk datamovement workloads such as disk backup, media streaming and filetransfers tend to be sensitive to network throughput, transactionaluses, such as web servers, tend to also be sensitive to session rates,and distributed application workloads, such as clustering, tend to besensitive to latency.

Scalability is the ability of a system to increase its performance inproportion to the amount of resources provided to the system, within acertain range. Scalability is another important attribute of networkedsystems. Scalability underlies many of the limitations of known I/Oarchitectures. On one hand, there is the desirability of being able toaugment the capabilities of an existing system over time by addingadditional computational resources so that systems always havereasonable room to grow. In this context, it is desirable to architect asystem whose network efficiencies improve as processors are added to thesystem. On the other hand, scalability is also important to improvesystem performance over time, as subsequent generations of systemsdeliver more processing resources per unit of cost or unit of size.

The networking function, like other I/O functions, resides outside thememory coherency domain of multiprocessor systems. Networking data andcontrol structures are memory based and access memory through hostbridges using direct memory access (DMA) semantics. The basic unit ofnetwork protocol processing in known networks is a packet. Packets havewell defined representations when traversing a wire or networkinterface, but can have arbitrary representations when they are storedin system memory. Network interfaces, in their simplest forms, areessentially queuing mechanisms between the memory representation and thewire representation of packets.

There are a plurality of limitations that affect network efficiencies.For example, the number of queues between a network interface and itssystem is constrained by a need to preserve packet arrival ordering.Also for example, the number of processors servicing a network interfaceis constrained by the processors having to coordinate service of sharedqueues, when using multiple processors; it is difficult to achieve adesired affinity between stateful sessions and processors over time.Also for example, a packet arrival notification is asynchronous (e.g.,interrupt driven) and is associated with one processor per networkinterface. Also for example, the I/O path includes at least one hostbridge and generally one or more fanout switches or bridges, thusdegrading DMA to longer latency and lower bandwidth than processormemory accesses. Also for example, multiple packet memoryrepresentations are simultaneously used at different levels of a packetprocessing sequence with consequent overhead of transformingrepresentations. Also for example, asynchronous interrupt notificationsincur a processing penalty of taking an interrupt. The processingpenalty can be disproportionately large considering a worst caseinterrupt rate.

One challenge associated with network systems relates to shared networkinterfaces. To provide a shared network interface which is operational,the shared network feature should have at least one of a plurality offeatures.

For example, it is desirable to provide a network system with a sharablenetwork interface that supports subdivision into multiple logicalentities whose configuration and control can be exclusively delegated.It is desirable to provide a network system in which network interfaceseach logical entity are capable of being assigned to various extensiblepartitions with dedicated local resource usage per partition. It isdesirable to provide control of local resource usage via a multi levelrule hierarchy. It is desirable to provide extensible partitions thatenforce secure separation and controlled sharing with strict boundaries.It is desirable to provide resource ownership control and mutualexclusiveness via configurable local and remote resource allocation. Itis desirable to provide event notification that is independent perpartition to allow for fine grain management of control resources. It isdesirable to enable reconciling physical resource consolidation withlogical resource separation and to enable programmatic and dynamicaddition and removal of processing resource in response to changeswithin the network system.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In accordance with the present invention, a network system is set forthwhich provides a virtualized partitionable shared network interface.

For example, in one embodiment, the network system includes a mechanismfor providing virtualization of network interface resources at variouslayers. In one embodiment, the network system provides for sharing ofthe network interface among multiple domain environments with enhancedhooks for exclusiveness.

Also, in one embodiment, the network system provides tables for MAC/VLANidentification with precedence logic at layer 1 and layer 2, ternaryassociative ternary content address memory (TCAM) and flow matching toprovide additional unique identification at layer 3.

Also, in one embodiment, the network system includes fine tuning of theflows within domains for steering to processors with warm caches toprovide faster processing.

Also, in one embodiment, the network system includes a mechanism forsteering different events to well defined domains for management andfast path processing. The mechanism generates sharable message signaledinterrupts with event and domain granularity.

In one embodiment, the invention relates to a network system having aplurality of processing partitions which includes a network interfaceunit coupled to a plurality of processing entities. The networkinterface unit includes a plurality of memory access channels. Theplurality of memory access channels is virtualized. The networkinterface unit is shared among the plurality of processing partitions.

In another embodiment, the invention relates to a method for providing anetwork system with a plurality of processing partitions which includesproviding a network interface unit coupled to a plurality of processingentities, virtualizing the plurality of memory access channels, andsharing the network interface unit among the plurality of processingpartitions. The network interface unit includes a plurality of memoryaccess channels.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention may be better understood, and its numerousobjects, features and advantages made apparent to those skilled in theart by referencing the accompanying drawings. The use of the samereference number throughout the several figures designates a like orsimilar element.

FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of a multiprocessor network system.

FIG. 2 shows a conceptual diagram of the asymmetrical processingfunctional layering of the present invention.

FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of the functional components of theasymmetrical processing architecture.

FIG. 4 shows a block diagram of a software view of the network system.

FIG. 5A shows a block diagram of the flow of packet data and associatedcontrol signals in the network system from the operational perspectiveof receiving incoming packet data.

FIG. 5B shows a block diagram of the flow of packet data and associatedcontrol signals in the network system from the operational perspectiveof transmitting packet data.

FIG. 6 shows a block diagram of an implementation of a mailbox image ofan interrupt status register in the multiprocessor system.

FIG. 7 shows a diagram of the timing sequence for an interrupt serviceroutine utilizing the mailbox configuration.

FIG. 8 shows a block diagram of a network interface unit.

FIGS. 9A and 9B, generally referred to as FIG. 9, show a block diagramof a receive packet FIFO module and a packet classifier module.

FIG. 10 shows a schematic block diagram of a receive DMA module.

FIG. 11 shows a schematic block diagram of a transmit DMA module and atransmit FIFO/reorder logic module.

FIG. 12 shows a schematic block diagram of an example of a four portnetwork interface unit.

FIG. 13 shows a schematic block diagram of an example of a two portnetwork interface unit.

FIG. 14 shows a flow chart of the classification of a packet received bythe network interface unit.

FIG. 15 shows a flow chart of the movement of a packet received by thenetwork interface unit.

FIG. 16 shows a flow chart of the movement of a packet transmitted bythe network interface unit.

FIG. 17 shows a flow chart of the operation of a port scheduler.

FIG. 18 shows a flow chart of a select operation of the port scheduler.

FIG. 19 shows a flow chart of a loop operation of the port scheduler.

FIG. 20 shows a flow chart of the operation of a weighted random earlydiscard module.

FIG. 21 shows a diagram of a receive DMA channel's data structures.

FIG. 22 shows a diagram of a transmit DMA channel's data structures.

FIG. 23 shows a block diagram of the packet classification hierarchy.

FIG. 24 shows a flow diagram of a receive flow between a networkinterface unit and a network system software stack.

FIG. 25 shows a flow diagram of a transmit flow between a networkinterface unit and a network system software stack.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Network System Overview Referring to FIG. 1, a block diagram of anetwork system 100 is shown. More specifically, the network system 100includes a network interface unit 110 which is coupled to aninterconnect device 112 via an interconnect controller 114. Theinterconnect controller 114 is also coupled to a peripheral interfacemodule 116. The interconnect device 112 is also coupled to a pluralityof processing entities 120 and to memory system 130. The processingentities 120 are coupled to the memory system 130. Each processingentity 120 includes a respective cache 121.

The interconnect device 112 may be an input/output (I/O) bus (such ase.g., a PCI Express bus) along with a corresponding bus bridge, acrossbar switch or any other type of interconnect device. In oneembodiment, the interconnect device 112 or a bus bridge within theinterconnect device 112 may include an I/O memory management unit(IOMMU). The interconnect device 112 may be conceptualized as part ofthe interconnect in the processor coherency domain. The interconnectdevice 112 resides on the boundary between the coherent and thenon-coherent domains of the network system 100.

Each processing entity 120 may be a processor, a group of processors, aprocessor core, a group of processor cores, a processor thread or agroup of processor threads or any combination of processors, processorcores or processor threads. A single processor may include a pluralityof processor cores and each processor core may include a plurality ofprocessor threads. Accordingly, a single processor may include aplurality of processing entities 120. Each processing entity 120 alsoincludes a corresponding memory hierarchy. The memory hierarchyincludes, e.g., a first level cache (such as cache 121), a second levelcache, etc. The memory hierarchy may also include a processor portion ofa corresponding non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA) memory system.

The memory system 130 may include a plurality of individual memorydevices such as a plurality of memory modules. Each individual memorymodule or a subset of the plurality of individual memory modules may becoupled to a respective processing entity 120. The memory system 130 mayalso include corresponding memory controllers as well as additionalcache levels. So for example, if the processing entities 120 of thenetwork system 100 each include a first level cache, then the memorysystem 130 might include one or more second level caches.

The network system 100 provides a virtualized partitionable sharednetwork interface. For example, the network system 100 includes amechanism for providing virtualization of network interface resources atvarious layers. The network system 100 shares the network interfaceamong multiple domain environments with enhanced hooks forexclusiveness.

Also, the network system 100 provides tables for MAC/VLAN identificationwith precedence logic at layer 1 and layer 2, ternary associativeternary content address memory (TCAM) and flow matching to provideadditional unique identification at layer 3.

Also, the network system 100 includes fine tuning of the flows withindomains for steering to processor entities with warm caches to providefaster processing. Also, the network system 100 includes a mechanism forsteering different events to well defined domains for management andfast path processing. The mechanism generates sharable message signaledinterrupts with event and domain granularity.

In one embodiment, the network system 100 has a plurality of processingpartitions and includes a network interface unit coupled to a pluralityof processing entities. The network interface unit includes a pluralityof memory access channels which are virtualized. The network interfaceunit is shared among the plurality of processing partitions.

The network system may include one or more of a plurality of features.For example, the memory access channels may include separate bufferingresources within the network system. The memory access channels mayoperate on separate buffering resources within the processingpartitions. A first set of the plurality of memory access channels maybe associated with a first processing partition and a second set of theplurality of memory access channels may be associated with a secondprocessing partition. The network system 100 may include a networkinterface software stack which provides access to the network interfaceand various memory access channels may be associated with correspondingprocessing entities via the network interface software stack. Thenetwork system software stack may include a plurality of independentoperating system images. The network system 100 may include a partitionmanagement module which virtualizes network system resources so as toallow simultaneous operation of the plurality of independent operatingsystems sharing the network system. Each of the plurality of independentoperating systems may include one or more instantiations of a networkinterface unit device driver. Memory access channels may be isolated andexclusively controlled by an instantiation of a network interface unitdevice driver executing within a well defined partition. Memory accesschannels may be confined in their memory access scope to well definedmemory regions where the memory regions accessible by a memory channelare not directly programmable by the partition associated with saidmemory channel. Memory access channels may be subject to address rangechecking and relocation for every access to a processing partitionmemory.

Asymmetrical Processing Architecture

The method and apparatus of the present invention is capable ofimplementing asymmetrical multi-processing wherein processing resourcesare partitioned for processes and flows. The partitions can be used toimplement networking functions by using strands of a multi-strandedprocessor, or Chip Multi-Threaded Core Processor (CMT) to implement keylow-level functions, protocols, selective off-loading, or evenfixed-function appliance-like systems. Using the CMT architecture foroffloading leverages the traditionally larger processor teams and theclock speed benefits possible with custom methodologies. It also makesit possible to leverage a high capacity memory-based communicationinstead of an I/O interface. On-chip bandwidth and the higher bandwidthper pin supports CMT inclusion of network interfaces and packetclassification functionality.

Asymmetrical processing in the system of the present invention is basedon selectively implementing, off-loading, or optimizing specificfunctions, protocols, or flows, while preserving the networkingfunctionality already present within the operating system of the localserver or remote participants. The network offloading can be viewed asgranular slicing through the layers for specific flows, functions orapplications. The “offload” category includes the set of networkingfunctions performed either below the TCP/IP stack, or the selectiveapplication of networking functions vertically for a set ofconnections/applications. Examples of the offload category include: (a)bulk data movement (NFS client, RDMA, iSCSI); (b) packet overheadreduction; (c) zero copy (application posted buffer management); and (d)scalability and isolation (traffic spreading from a hardwareclassifier).

FIG. 2 shows the “layers” 1-4 of a traditional networking system thatcomprise the link, network, transport and application layers,respectively. A dashed line illustrates the delineation of networkingfunctions that are traditionally handled by hardware vs. software. Asshown in FIG. 2, in most networking systems this line of delineation isbetween layers 2 and 3.

Network functions in prior art systems are generally layered andcomputing resources are symmetrically shared by layers that aremultiprocessor ready, underutilized by layers that are notmultiprocessor ready, or not shared at all by layers that have coarsebindings to hardware resources. In some cases, the layers have differentdegrees of multiprocessor readiness, but generally they do not have theability to be adapted for scaling in multiprocessor systems. Layeredsystems often have bottlenecks that prevent linear scaling.

In prior art systems, time slicing occurs across all of the layers,applications, and operating systems. Also, in prior art systems,low-level networking functions are interleaved, over time, in all of theelements. The present invention implements a method and apparatus thatdedicates processing resources rather than utilizing those resources astime sliced. The dedicated resources are illustrated by the verticalcolumns in FIG. 2 that will sometimes be referred to herein as “silos.”

The advantage of the asymmetrical model of the present invention is thatit moves away from time slicing and moves toward “space slicing.” In thepresent system, the processing entities are dedicated to implement aparticular networking function, even if the dedication of theseprocessing resources to a particular network function sometimes resultsin “wasting” the dedicated resource because it is unavailable to assistwith some other function.

In the method and apparatus of the present invention, the allocation ofprocessing entities (processor cores or individual strands) can beallocated with fine granularity. The “silos” that are defined in thearchitecture of the present invention are desirable for enhancingperformance, correctness, or for security purposes.

FIG. 3 is an illustration of a networking system that is partitionedwhereby a plurality of processing entities are asymmetrically allocatedto various networking functions. The functional associations of theprocessing entities 120 a-n are illustrated by the dashed boundariesdesignated by reference numerals 310 a-d. The functional association ofprocessing entity 120 a and memory system 130 designated by referencenumeral 310 a is a “hypervisor” that is responsible for managing thepartitioning and association of the other processing entities, as willbe described in greater detail hereinbelow.

Reference numeral 310 b shows the association of a processing entity 120b with memory system 130 and a network interface unit resource of thenetwork interface unit 110. Reference numeral 310 c illustrates theassociation of a plurality of processing entities 120 c-e with memorysystem 130 for performing a processing function that does not directlyinvolve a network interface resource. Reference numeral 310 dillustrates an association of a plurality of processing entities 120 f-nwith memory system 130 and one or more network interface resources ofthe network interface unit 110. As is discussed in greater detailherein, the various processing entities 120 a-n can comprise an entireprocessor core or a processing strand of a processing core.

The hypervisor 312 manages the partitioning and association of thevarious processing entities with the memory system 130 and, in someinstances, with a predetermined set of networking resources in thenetwork interface unit. Thus the hypervisor 312 has the responsibilityfor configuring the control resources that will be dedicated towhichever processing entity is charged with responsibility for managinga particular view of the interface. For example, in the silo that isdefined to include the M processing entities 120 f-n, only thoseprocessing entities will have the ability to access a predetermined setof hardware resources relating to the interface. The control of theother processing entities, e.g., processing entities 120 c-e, and theaccess to the memory system 130 for these processing entities isseparated.

In the asymmetrical processing system illustrated in FIG. 3, thespecific assignment and mapping of well defined subfunctions or sessionsto preassigned processing entities is done to increase efficiency andthroughput. Any number of processing entities can be assigned to aprocessing task that does not directly involve a network interfaceresource, such as the N processing entities 120 c-e. Likewise, anynumber of processing entities can be assigned to perform a networkfunctionality, protocol or hardware function, such as the M processingentities 120 f-n illustrated in FIG. 3.

The present invention uses computer resources for network specificfunctions that could be low level or high level. High-level resourcesthat are concentrated and implemented in the “silo” associations of thepresent invention are faster than a prior art general implementation ofa symmetrical processing system. Using the asymmetrical processingsystem of the present invention, low-level functionality previouslyperformed in hardware can be raised above the delineation lineillustrated in FIG. 2. If there is a processing entity with abottleneck, another processing entity, or strand, can become part of theflow or part of the function being executed in a particular “silo.” Inthe asymmetrical system of the present invention, the processingentities that are associated with an interface or other functionalityremain efficient because they continue to be associated with the sharedmemory resources. The processing entities 120 a-n are dedicated withoutbeing physically moved within the various layers of the networkingsystem.

FIG. 3 also shows two network interface instances 110. Each of theinterfaces could have multiple links. The system of the presentinvention comprises aggregation and policy mechanisms which makes itpossible to apply all of the control and the mapping of the processingentities 120 a-120 n to more than one physical interface.

In the asymmetrical processing system of the present invention, fine orcoarse grain processing resource controls and memory separation can beused to achieve the desired partitioning. Furthermore it is possible tohave a separate program image and operating system for each resource.Very “coarse” bindings can be used to partition a large number ofprocessing entities (e.g., half and half), or fine granularity can beimplemented wherein a single strand of a particular core can be used fora function or flow. The separation of the processing resources on thisbasis can be used to define partitions to allow simultaneous operationof various operating systems in a separated environment or it can beused to define two interfaces, but to specify that these two interfacesare linked to the same operating system.

Referring to FIG. 4, a block diagram of a software view of the networksystem 100 is shown. More specifically, a network system software stack410 includes one or more instantiations of a network interface unitdevice driver 420, the hypervisor 312, as well as one or more operatingsystems 430 (e.g., OS1, OS2, OS3). The network interface unit 110interacts with the operating system 430 via a respective networkinterface unit device driver 420.

One of the processing entities may be configured to execute a partitionmanagement module (e.g., hypervisor 312). Hypervisor 312 is a high levelfirmware based function which performs a plurality of functions andservices relating to the network system such as e.g., creating andenforcing the partitioning of a logically partitioned network system.Hypervisor 312 is a software implemented virtual machine. Thus, thenetwork system 100, via hypervisor 312, allows the simultaneousexecution of independent operating system images by virtualizing all thehardware resources of the network system 100. Each of the operatingsystems 430 interact with the network interface unit device driver 420via extended partition portions of the hypervisor 312.

FIGS. 5A and 5B are illustrations of the flow of packet data andassociated control signals in the system of the present invention fromthe operational perspective of receiving incoming packet data andtransmitting packet data, respectively. The network interface 110 iscomprised of a plurality of physical network interfaces that providedata to a plurality of media access controllers (MACs). The MACs areoperably connected to a classifier and a queuing layer comprising aplurality of queues. The classifier “steers” the flow of packet data inconjunction with a flow table, as described in more detail hereinbelow.

A mapping function based on the classification function performed by theclassifier, and a receive DMA controller function are used to provide anordered mapping of the packets into a merging module. The output of themerging module is a flow of packets into a plurality of receive DMAchannels that are functionally illustrated as a plurality of queuingresources, where the number of receive DMA channels shown in FIG. 5A isindependent of the number of physical interfaces providing inputs to theinterface unit. Both data and “events” travel over the DMA channels. Thequeuing resources move the packet data to the shared memory.

As was discussed above, the queues also hold “events” and therefore, areused to transfer messages corresponding to interrupts. The maindifference between data and events in the system of the presentinvention is that data is always consumed by memory, while events aredirected to the processing entities.

Somewhere along the path between the network interface unit 110 and thedestination processing entity, the events are translated into a“wake-up” signal. The classifier determines which of the processingentities will receive the interrupt corresponding to the processing of apacket of data. The classifier also determines where in the sharedmemory a data packet will be stored for further processing. The queuesare isolated by the designation of DMA channels.

There are multiple instances of control registers (pages) in the networkinterface unit 110. The associations between the intended strands of theprocessing entities and the control registers are separable via thehypervisor 312 (see, e.g. FIG. 3). This is a logical relationship,rather than a physical relationship between the functional components ofthe interface unit. Aggregation and classification are accomplished bythe two interfaces that share the classifier and also share the DMAchannels. The classification function and the assignment of packets toDMA channels can be accomplished regardless of where the data packetoriginated. Fine and coarse grain are implemented by the flow table andthe operation of the hypervisor to manage the receive DMA channels andthe processing entities.

FIG. 5 B is an illustration of the flow of packet data and associatedcontrol signals from the operational perspective of transmitted packetdata. Packets transmitted from the various processing entities 120 a-120n are received by the interconnect 112 and are directed via plurality oftransmit DMA channels. The transmit DMA channels generate a packetstream that is received by the reorder module. As will be described ingreater detail hereinbelow, the reorder module is responsible forgenerating an ordered stream of packets and for providing a fan-outfunction. The output of the reorder module is a stream of packets thatare stored in transmit datal FIFOs. The packets in the transmit dataFIFOs are received by the plurality of media access controllers and arethereafter passed to the network interfaces.

FIG. 6 is an illustration of a mailbox and register-based interruptevent notification apparatus for separable, low overhead, scalablenetwork interface service. In the shared memory environment of theasymmetrical processing system of the present invention, it is importantto avoid physical interrupts, because it complicates management of theshared memory resources. In the present system “events” are messagesthat are essentially the same as memory writes. The “message” (or the“interrupt”) is simply a means for waking up a specified processingentity; it does not contain information relating to why the processingentity is requested to wake up. When a request to wake up a processingentity is issued, it is also necessary to explain the nature of the taskthat the processing entity is requested to perform. This is typicallyaccomplished by designating a receive DMA interrupt status register 1016in the network interface unit 110 that contains information relating tothe nature of the task to be performed. When the processing entity,e.g., processing entity 120 b, is awakened, it will read the informationin the interrupt status register that denotes the task to be performed.While the interrupt status register in the interface unit hardwareprovides accurate information relating to the state of the interruptrequest, accessing of this information involves significant processingoverhead and latency.

In the system of the present invention, data corresponding to theinterrupt status that would normally be obtained from the Rx DMAinterrupt status register 1016 in the network interface unit 110 istransferred into a “mailbox” 1010 in the shared memory 130. The sharedmemory mailbox is used to store an image of a corresponding interruptregister in the network interface unit 110. The image of the interruptstatus register is stored in the shared memory mailbox just prior tosending a message to a processing entity asking it to wake up andperform a specified task. The processing entity that is requested toperform a specified task can access the information in the shared memorymailbox much more efficiently and quickly than it can obtain theinformation from the corresponding hardware register in the networkinterface.

It is possible, however, that the information in the hardware interruptstatus register in the interface unit may change between the time themessage is issued to a processing entity and the time the processingentity “wakes up” to perform the specified task. Therefore the datacontained in the image of the interrupt storage register that is storedin the shared memory mailbox may not be the latest version.

By checking the information stored in the shared memory mailbox 1010,the processing entity can quickly determine the reason it was asked towake up. It is very easy for the processing entity to consult the sharedmemory mailbox because of its close proximity to the processing entity.The purpose of the mailbox 1010 is to minimize the number of times thatthe processing entity must cross the I/O interface. The mailbox 1010allows the processing entity 120 a to postpone the time that it actuallyneeds to read the contents of the interrupt status register in theinterface unit.

The advantages relating to the shared memory mailbox implementation ofthe present invention can be seen by referring to FIG. 7. In aconventional system wherein the processing entity must rely entirely onan interrupt status register, the sequence of processing steps duringthe interrupt “high” signal is illustrated generally. The systemexecutes an interrupt service routine wherein the interrupt is decodedto identify a particular process to be executed. The processing entitythen executes a PIO read (PIORD) to retrieve data from the interruptstatus register. There is a latency, illustrated by Δt1 and a relatedstall, associated with the time it takes the load from the interruptstatus register to complete. The data obtained from the interrupt statusregister is used by the processing entity to perform actionscorresponding to the information contained in the interrupt statusregister. After the actions associated with the original read of theinterrupt status register are completed, a subsequent PIORD is issued todetermine if the interrupt status register contains data correspondingto additional actions that must be executed. This subsequent PIORD has acorresponding latency Δt2 that results in a second stall. If the resultof the subsequent PIORD indicates that the data previously obtained fromthe interrupt status register is the most current information, theprocessing entity responds with a return (RET) and the interrupt isterminated. As can be seen in FIG. 7, the interrupt processing sequencefor an interrupt corresponding to a single process results in a minimumof two accesses to the interrupt register and a significant memoryaccess latency for servicing the interrupt.

The interrupt service routine implemented using the shared memorymailbox of the present invention is illustrated generally by the lowertiming diagram in FIG. 7. In the present invention, the processingentity accesses the image of the interrupt register in the shared memorymailbox, rather than executing a PIORD. This provides much faster accessto the data and, therefore, significantly decreases the overall latencyfor the interrupt service routine. The present invention also decreasesthe overall latency of the interrupt service routine by initiating asubsequent PIORD while the process is being executed. The subsequentPIORD is executed on an interleaved basis while the processing entity isexecuting the process and the contents of the actual interrupt statusregister can be verified to determine if additional actions have beenadded to the interrupt request subsequent to storing the contents of theinterrupt status register in the shared memory mailbox. In essence,therefore, in the present invention, the subsequent PIORD can be“prefetched” by interleaving it with the processing, thereby allowingthe status of the actual interrupt status register to be verifiedimmediately upon completion of the process resulting in an overallsignificantly shorter time for the system to process the interruptservice routine.

Network Interface Unit Overview

Referring to FIG. 8, a block diagram of a network interface unit 110 isshown. The network interface unit 110 includes a transmit DMA module812, a transmit FIFO/reorder logic module 814, a receive FIFO module816, a receive packet classifier module 818, and a receive DMA module820. The network interface unit 110 also includes a media access control(MAC) module 830 and a system interface module 832. The transmit packetFIFO reorder logic module 814 includes a transmit packet FIFO 850 and atransmit reorder module 852. The receive FIFO module 816 includes areceive packet FIFO 860 and a receive control FIFO 862.

Each of the modules within the network interface unit 110 includerespective programmable input/output (PIO) registers. The PIO registersare distributed among the modules of the network interface unit 110 tocontrol respective modules. The PIO registers are where memory mappedI/O loads and stores to control and status registers (CSRs) aredispatched to different functional units.

The system interface module 832 provides the interface to theinterconnect device 112 and ultimately to the memory system 130.

The MAC module 830 provides a network connection such as an Ethernetcontroller. The MAC module 830 supports a link protocol and statisticscollection. Packets received by the MAC module 830 are first classifiedbased upon the packet header information via the packet classifier 818.The classification determines the receive DMA channel within the receiveDMA module 820. Transmit packets are posted to a transmit DMA channelwithin the transmit DMA module 812. Each packet may include a gatherlist. The network interface unit 110 supports checksum and CRC-32coffload on both receive and transmit data paths via the receive FIFOmodule 816 and the transmit FIFO reorder logic module 814, respectively.

The network interface unit 110 provides support for partitioning. Forfunctional blocks that are physically associated with a network port(such as MAC registers within the MAC module 830) or logical devicessuch as receive and transmit DMA channels within the receive DMA module820 and the transmit DMA module 812, respectively. Control registers aregrouped into separate physical pages so that a partition manager (orhypervisor) can manage the functional blocks through a memory managementunit on the processor side of the network system to provide an operatingsystem (potentially multiple operating systems) direct access to thecontrol registers. Control registers of shared logical blocks such asthe packet classifier module 818, though grouped into one or morephysical pages, may be managed solely by a partition manager (orhypervisor).

Each DMA channel can be viewed as belonging to a partition. The CSRs ofmultiple DMA channels can be grouped into a virtual page to simplifymanagement of the DMA channels.

Each transmit DMA channel or receive DMA channel can perform rangechecking and relocation for addresses residing in multiple programmableranges. The addresses in the configuration registers, packet gather listpointers on the transmit side and the allocated buffer pointer on thereceive side are then checked and relocated accordingly.

The network interface unit 110 supports sharing available systeminterrupts. The number of system interrupts may be less than the numberof logical devices. A system interrupt is an interrupt that is sent to aprocessing entity 120. A logical device refers to a functional blockthat may ultimately cause an interrupt.

A logical device may be a transmit DMA channel, a receive DMA channel, aMAC device or other system level module. One or more logical conditionsmay be defined by a logical device. A logical device may have up to twogroups of logical conditions. Each group of logical conditions includesa summary flag, also referred to as a logical device flag (LDF).Depending on the logical conditions captured by the group, the logicaldevice flag may be level sensitive or may be edge triggered. An unmaskedlogical condition, when true, may trigger an interrupt.

Logical devices are grouped into logical device groups. A logical devicegroup is a set of logical devices sharing an interrupt. A group may haveone or more logical devices. The state of the logical devices that arepart of a logical device group may be read by software.

Not all logical devices belonging to a group trigger an interrupt.Whether or not a logical device can trigger an interrupt is controlledby a logical device group interrupt mask (LDGIM). The logical devicegroup interrupt mask is a per logical device group mask that defineswhich logical device within the group, when a logical condition (LC)becomes true, can issue an interrupt. The logical condition is acondition that when true can trigger an interrupt. A logical conditionmay be a level, (i.e., the condition is constantly being evaluated) ormay be an edge (i.e., a state is maintained when the condition firstoccurs, this state is cleared to enable detection of a next occurrenceof the condition).

One example of a logical device that belongs to a group but does notgenerate an interrupt is a transmit DMA channel which is part of alogical device group. Software may examine the flags associated with thetransmit DMA channel by setting the logical device group number of thelogical device. However, the transmit DMA channel will not trigger aninterrupt if the corresponding bit of the interrupt mask is not set.

A system interrupt control value is associated with a logical devicegroup. The system interrupt control value includes an arm bit, a timerand system interrupt data.

System interrupt data is the data associated with the system interruptand is sent along with the system interrupt. The system interruptcontrol value is set by a partition manager or a hypervisor. A devicedriver of the network interface unit 110 writes to a register to set thearm bit and set the value of the timer. Hardware causes the timer tostart counting down. A system interrupt is only issued if the timer isexpired, the arm bit is set and one or more logical devices in a logicaldevice group have their flags set and not masked. This system interrupttimer value ensures that there is some minimal separation betweeninterrupt requests.

Software clears the state or adjusts the conditions of individualLogical Devices after servicing. Additionally, software enables amailbox update of the Logical Device if desired. In one embodiment,hardware does not support any aggregate updates applied to an entirelogical device group.

With one embodiment of the integrated network interface unit 110, thesystem interrupt data is provided to a non cacheable unit to lookup thehardware thread and interrupt number. With another embodiment of thenetwork interface unit 110, some higher order bits of the systeminterrupt data are used to select a PCI function and the other bits ofthe logical device group ID are passed as part of the message signalinterrupt (MSI) data, depending on the range value.

For one embodiment of the network interface unit 110, a PCI-Express orHyperTransport (HT) module supports a system interrupt data to messagesignal interrupt (MSI) lookup unit. Thus, the MSI lookup unit provides asynchronization point. Before an interrupt is issued across theinterconnect 112, the network interface unit 110 looks up the MSIaddress and the MSI data. A posted write to the MSI address with the MSIdata is issued. This is always an ordered request. A datapath interfaceis the interface to the specific interconnect.

A FIFO queues up requests from processing entities 120. Requests areread one by one and dispatched to the different functional units of thenetwork interface unit 110. Write requests are dispatched to thefunctional unit if the function can accept the request. Before a readrequest is issued, all prior requests (either read requests or writerequests) are acknowledged.

Another embodiment of the integrated network interface unit 110 systeminterface supports cache line size transfers. Logically, there are twoclasses of requests, ordered requests and bypass requests. The twoclasses of requests are queued separately in the system interface unit832. An ordered request is not issued to the memory system 130 until“older” ordered and bypass requests are completed. However,acknowledgements may return out of order. Bypass requests may be issuedas long as the memory system 130 can accept the request and may overtake“older” ordered requests that are enqueued or in transit to the memorysystem 130. Packet data transfers both receive and transmit, aresubmitted as bypass requests. Control data requests that affect thestate of the DMA channels are submitted as ordered requests.Additionally, write requests can be posted and no acknowledgement isreturned.

In the other embodiment of the integrated network interface unit 110, anon cacheable unit is a focal point where PIO requests are dispatched tothe network interface unit 110 and where the PIO information readreturns and interrupts are processed. The non cacheable unit serializesthe PIOs from different processor threads to the network interface unit110. The non cacheable unit also includes an internal table where, basedon the System Interrupt Data, the non cacheable unit looks up theprocessor thread number and the interrupt number used.

Referring to FIGS. 9A and 9B, a block diagram of the receive FIFO module816 and the packet classifier module 818 is shown. The receive FIFOmodule 816 is coupled to the MAC module 830 and the receive DMA module820 as well as to the packet classifier module 818. The packetclassifier module 818 is coupled to the MAC module 830 and the receiveFIFO module 816.

The receive FIFO module 816 includes a per port receive packet FIFO 860and a per port control FIFO 862. For example, if the network interfaceunit 110 includes two network ports, then the per port receive packetFIFO 860 includes two corresponding FIFO buffers, if the networkinterface unit 110 includes four network ports, then the per portreceive packet FIFO 860 includes four FIFO buffers. Similarly, if thenetwork interface unit 110 includes two network ports, then the per portcontrol FIFO 860 includes two corresponding control FIFO buffers, if thenetwork interface unit 110 includes four network ports, then the perport control FIFO 860 includes four control FIFO buffers.

The packet classifier module 818 includes a Layer 2 parser 920, avirtual local area network (VLAN) table 922, a MAC address table 924, alayer 3 and 4 parser 926, a hash compute module 930, a lookup andcompare module 932, a TCAM and associated data module 934 and a mergelogic receive DMA channel (RDC) map lookup module 936. The packetclassifier module 818 also includes a receive DMA channel multiplexermodule 938. The packet classifier module 818 also includes a checksummodule 940. The packet classifier module 818, and specifically, thelookup and compare module 932, is coupled to a hash table 950.

Referring to FIG. 10, a block diagram of the receive DMA module 820 isshown. The receive DMA module 820 includes a plurality of receive DMAchannels 1010, e.g., receive DMA channel 0—receive DMA channel 31. Thereceive DMA module 820 also includes a port scheduler module 1020, areceive DMA control scheduler module 1022, a datapath engine module1024, a memory acknowledgement (ACK) processing module 1026 and a memoryand system interface module 1028.

The plurality of DMA channels 1010 are coupled to the port schedulermodule 1020 as well as the receive DMA channel control scheduler 1022and the memory ACK processing module 1026. The port scheduler module1020 is coupled to the receive packet FIFO 860 and the receive controlFIFO 862 as well as to the datapath engine scheduler module 1024. Thedatapath engine scheduler 1024 is coupled to the port scheduler module1020, the receive DMA channel control scheduler 1022 as well as to thememory acknowledgement processing module 1026 and the memory and systeminterface module 1028. The memory and system interface module 1028 iscoupled to the receive packet FIFO 860 and the receive control FIFO 862as well as to the datapath engine scheduler module 1024 and to thesystem interface module 832. The memory ACK processing module 1026 iscoupled to the plurality of DMA channels 1010 as well as to the datapathengine scheduler 1024 and the system interface module 832.

Each of the plurality of receive DMA channels 1010 includes a receiveblock ring (RBR) prefetch module 1040, a receive completion ring (RCR)Buffer module 1042, a receive DMA channel state module 1044, a weightedrandom early discard WRED logic module 1046 and a partition definitionregister module 1048.

Referring to FIG. 11, a block diagram of the transmit DMA module 812 andtransmit FIFO/reorder logic module 814 is shown. The transmit DMA module812 is coupled to the system interface module 832 as well as to thetransmit FIFO/reorder logic module 814. The transmit FIFO/reorder module814 is coupled to the system interface module 832 as well as to thetransmit DMA module 812.

The transmit FIFO/reorder logic module 814 includes per port transmitFIFO 1110 and a per port reorder module 1111 as well as a checksum andCRC module 1162. The per port transmit FIFO 1110 and the per portreorder module 1111 each include logic and buffers which correspond tothe number of network ports within the network interface unit 110. Forexample, if the network interface unit 110 includes two network ports,then the module includes two per port reorder modules and the transmitFIFO 1110 includes two FIFO buffers, if the network interface unit 110includes four network ports, then the per port reorder module includesfour per port reorder modules and the transmit FIFO 1110 includes fourFIFO buffers.

The transmit DMA module 812 includes a plurality of transmit DMAchannels 1120, e.g., transmit DMA channel 0—transmit DMA channel 31. Thetransmit DMA module 812 also includes a scheduler module 1130, atransmit DMA channel prefetch scheduler 1132, a multiplexer 1134, and anacknowledgement (ACK) processing module 1136.

Each transmit DMA channel 1120 includes a control state register portion1140, a transmit ring prefetch buffer 1142 and a partition controlregister 1144. The control state register portion 1140 includes aplurality of control state registers which are associated with the PIOregisters and which control an individual transmit DMA channel 1120.

The scheduler module 1130 includes per port deficit round robin (DRR)scheduler modules 1150 as well as a round robin scheduler module 1152.The per port scheduler modules 1150 correspond to the number of networkports within the network interface unit 110. For example, if the networkinterface unit 110 includes two network ports, then the scheduler module1130 includes two per port DRR scheduler modules 1150 (port 0 DRRscheduler module and port 1 DRR scheduler module), if the networkinterface unit 110 includes four network ports, then the schedulermodule 1130 includes four per port DRR scheduler modules 1150 (port 0DRR scheduler module through port 3 DRR scheduler module). Each per portDRR scheduler module 1150 includes a transmit DMA channel map module1154.

The Transmit FIFO reorder logic module 814 includes a per port reordermodule 1111 and a per port transmit FIFO 1110 and a checksum and CRCmodule 1162. The per port transmit FIFO 1160 includes FIFO buffers whichcorrespond to the number of network ports within the network interfaceunit 110. For example, if the network interface unit 110 includes twonetwork ports, then the per port transmit FIFO 1110 includes two perport transmit FIFO buffers, if the network interface unit 110 includesfour network ports, then the per port transmit FIFO 1110 includes fourper port transmit FIFO buffers.

Referring to FIG. 12, a schematic block diagram of an example of a fourport network interface unit 1200 is shown. The four port networkinterface unit 1200 includes a transmit DMA module 812, a transmit FIFOreorder logic module 814, a receive FIFO module 816, a receive packetclassifier module 818, and a receive DMA module 820. The four portnetwork interface unit 1200 also includes a media access control (MAC)module 830 and a system interface module 832. The four port networkinterface unit 1200 also includes a zero copy function module 1210 whichis coupled to a TCP translation buffer table module 1212.

The packet classifier module 818 includes a corresponding ternarycontent addressable memory (TCAM) module 934. The packet classifiermodule 818 is coupled to an FC RAM module 950 which stores flow tablesfor use by the packet classifier module 818.

The receive DMA module 820 includes 32 receive DMA channels 1010. Thetransmit DMA module 812 includes 32 transmit DMA channels 1120. The MACmodule 830 includes four MAC ports 1220 as well as aserializer/deserializer (SERDES) bank module 1222. Because there arefour MAC ports 1220, the per port receive packet FIFOs 816 include fourcorresponding receive packet FIFOs and the per port transmit FIFOs 814include four corresponding transmit FIFOs. The system interface module832 includes a PCI Express interface module 1230, a system interfaceSERDES module 1232 and a HT interface module 1234.

Referring to FIG. 13, a schematic block diagram of an example of anintegrated network interface unit 1300 is shown. In the integratednetwork interface unit 1300, portions of the four port network interfaceunit 1200 are included within an integrated solution in which networkfunctions are included with a processor core. (The processor core isomitted from the Figure for clarity purposes).

More specifically, the integrated network interface unit 1300 includes atransmit DMA module 812, a transmit FIFO reorder logic module 814, areceive FIFO module 816, a receive packet classifier module 818, and areceive DMA module 820. The integrated network interface unit 1200 alsoincludes a media access control (MAC) module 830 and a system interfacemodule 832.

The packet classifier module 818 includes a corresponding TCAM module934. The packet classifier module 818 is coupled to an FC RAM module 950which stores flow tables for use by the packet classifier module 818.

The receive DMA module 820 includes 32 receive DMA channels 1010. Thetransmit DMA module 812 includes 32 transmit DMA channels 1120. The MACmodule 830 includes two MAC ports 1220 as well as a SERDES bank module1222. Because there are two MAC ports 1220, the per port receive packetFIFOs 816 include two corresponding receive packet FIFOs and the perport transmit FIFOs 814 include two corresponding transmit FIFOs. Thereceive and transmit FIFOs are stored within a network interface unitmemory pool. The system interface module 832 includes an I/O unit module1330 and a system interface unit module 1332.

Network Interface Unit Functional Overview

Referring to FIG. 14, a flow chart of the classification of a packetreceived by the network interface unit 110 is shown. More specifically,a packet is received by a MAC port of the MAC module 830 at step 1410.The MAC module 830 includes a plurality of media access controller (MAC)ports that support a network protocol such as an Ethernet protocol. Themedia access controller ports include layer 2 protocol logic, statisticcounters, address matching and filtering logic. The output from a mediaaccess controller port includes information on a destination address,whether the address is a programmed individual address or an acceptedgroup address, and the index associated with the destination address inthat category.

Packets from different physical ports are stored temporarily in a perport receive packet FIFO at step 1412. The packets are stored into theper port receive FIFO module 816, the header of the packet is copied tothe packet classifier module 818 at step 1414. The packet is passedthrough the checksum module at steps 1416. The packet classifier module818 determines at step 1420 to which receive DMA channel group thepacket belongs and an offset into the receive DMA channel table at step1420. In one embodiment, the network interface unit 110 includes eightreceive DMA channel groups.

Each receive DMA Channel 1010 includes a receive block ring (RBR), areceive completion ring (RCR) and a set of control and status registers.(See, e.g., FIG. 21.) Physically, the receive DMA channels 1010 areallocated as ring buffers in memory system 130. A receive DMA channel1010 is selected after an incoming packet is classified. A packet bufferis derived from a pool of packet buffers in the memory system 130 andused to store the incoming packet. Each receive DMA channel 1010 iscapable of issuing an interrupt based on the queue length of the receivecompletion ring or a time out. The receive block ring is a ring bufferof memory blocks posted by software. The receive completion ring is aring that stores the addresses of the buffers used to store incomingpackets.

In one embodiment, each receive DMA channel group table includes 32entries (see, e.g., FIG. 23). Each entry contains one receive DMAchannel 1010. Each table defines the group of receive DMA channels thatare allowed to move a packet to the system memory. The packet classifiermodule 818 chooses a table as an intermediate step before a finalreceive DMA channel 1010 is selected. The zeroth entry of the table isthe default receive DMA channel 1010. The default receive DMA channel1010 queues error packets within the group. The default can be one ofthe receive DMA channels in the group.

The Layer 2 parser 920 processes the network header to determine if thereceived packet contains a virtual local area network (VLAN) Tag at step1430. For a VLAN tagged packet, a VLAN ID is used to lookup into a VLANtable 922 to determine the receive DMA channel table number for thepacket. The packet classifier 818 also looks up the MAC address table924 to determine a receive DMA channel table number based on thedestination MAC address information. Software programs determine whichof the two results to use in subsequent classification. The output ofthe Layer 2 parser 920, together with the resulting receive DMA channeltable number, is passed to the layer 3 and 4 parser 926.

The Layer 3 and 4 parser 926 examines the EtherType, the Type ofService/Differentiated Services Code Point (TOS/DSCP) field and theProtocol ID/Next header field to determine whether the IP packet needsfurther classification at step 1432. The Layer 3 and 4 parser 926recognizes a fixed protocol such as a transmission control protocol(TCP) or a user datagram protocol (UDP). The Layer 3 and 4 parser 926also supports a programmable Protocol IP number. If the packet needsfurther classification, the packet generates a flow key and a TCAM keyat step 1434.

The TCAM key is provided to the TCAM unit 934 for an associative searchat step 1440. If there is a match, the result of the search (i.e., theTCAM result) may override the receive DMA channel Table selection forthe Layer 2 or provide an offset into the Layer 2 receive DMA channelTable and ignore the result from the Hash unit 930. The result of thesearch may also specify a zero copy flow identifier to be used in a zerocopy translation.

The TCAM result also determines whether a hash lookup based on the flowkey is needed at step 1442. Using the receive DMA channel table numberprovided by the TCAM module 934, which determines a partition of theexternal table the hash unit 930 can search, a lookup is launched andeither an exact match or an optimistic match is performed. If there is amatch, the result contains the offset into the receive DMA channel tableand the user data. The result may also contain a zero copy flowidentification value used in a zero copy operation.

The output from the hash unit 930 and the TCAM module 934 are merged todetermine the receive DMA channel 1010 at step 1450. The receive DMAchannel 1010 moves the packet into memory system 130. If a zero copyflow identification value is present as determined at step 1452, then azero copy function is performed at step 1454 and the receive DMA channel1010 moves the packet with header payload separation.

A zero copy function is a receive function that performs header vs.payload separation and places payloads at a correct location withinpre-posted (per flow) buffers. Each per flow buffer list may be viewedas a zero copy DMA channel. Packet headers are stored into memory system130 via regular receive DMA channels, as determined by the packetclassifier module 818. Using zero copy, the network interface unit 110may operate on a packet by packet basis without requiring reassemblybuffers within the network interface unit 110. Zero copy saves costlydata movement operations from a host protocol stack, and in some casesreduces the per packet overheads by postponing header processing until alarge set of buffers may be visited. Protocol state machines, andexception processing are maintained in the host protocol stack. Thus,the host's data movement function is removed on a selective basis andsubject to instantaneous buffer availability.

Based on the Flow ID, an anchor (part of the Zero Copy state), which isa variable set associating the transmission control protocol (TCP)sequence number space to a buffer list, and implicitly confining zerocopy to the current receive TCP window, and a buffer list are retrievedto determine whether payload placement is possible. Then one or morepayload DMA operations are determined.

The outputs of the packet classifier module 818 and possibly one or morezero copy DMA operations associated with the packet are stored into thereceive control FIFO 862.

The network interface unit 110 supports checksum offload and CRC-32coffload for transmission control protocol/streaming control transmissionprotocol (TCP/SCTP) payloads. The network interface unit 110 comparesthe calculated values with the values embedded in the packet. Theresults of the compare are sent to software via a completion statusindication. No discard decision is made based on the CRC result.Checksum/CRC errors do not affect the layer 3 and 4 classification.Similarly, the error status is provided to software via the completionstatus indication. Zero copy DMA operations are not performed ifchecksum errors are detected, though zero copy states are updatedregardless of the packet error. The entire packet is stored in systemmemory using the appropriate receive DMA channel.

The receive packet FIFO 860 is logically organized per physical port.Layer 2, 3 and 4 error information is logically synchronized with theclassification result of the corresponding packet.

Referring to FIG. 15, a flow chart of the movement of a packet by thereceive DMA module 820 of the network interface unit 110 is shown. Morespecifically, logically there are 32 Receive DMA channels (receive DMAchannel 0—receive DMA channel 31) available to incoming packets. Thedatapath engine scheduler 1024 is common across all DMA operations. Thedatapath engine scheduler 1024 also prefetches receive block pointers orupdates the completion ring of the receive DMA channels 1010 andprefetches zero copy buffer pointers.

To support partitioning, each receive DMA channel 1010 supports multiplememory rings. All the addresses posted by software, such as theconfiguration of the ring buffers and buffer block addresses are rangecompared and optionally translated when used to reference memory system130 based on the ranges.

A packet arrives at step 1559. Software posts buffer block pointers intothe receive block ring at step 1560. The size of each block isprogrammable, but fixed per channel. There are one or more packetbuffers within a buffer block. Software can specify up to three sizes ofpacket buffer. Hardware partitions a block. Each block can only containpacket buffers of the same size. For Zero Copy Flows, these packetbuffers are used to store packet headers only.

To reduce the per packet overhead, the network interface unit 110maintains a prefetch buffer 1040 for the receive block ring and a tailpointer for the receive completion ring. When the receive block ringprefetch signal is low, a request is issued to the DMA system toretrieve a cache line of block addresses from the ring. If the receivecompletion ring tail pointer needs to be updated, a write request isissued. The consistency of the receive completion ring state ismaintained by the network interface unit 110. The receive DMA channelcontrol scheduler 1022 maintains the fairness among the receive DMAchannels.

The port scheduler 1020 examines whether there are any packets availablefrom the receive packet FIFO 860 and the receive control FIFO 862 atstep 1562. The port scheduler 1020 then determines which port to servicefirst at step 1564. The port scheduler 1020 includes a Deficit RoundRobin scheduler.

The ports scheduler's determination does not depend on whether thepacket is part of a zero copy flow. From the control header, the portscheduler 1020 determines which receive DMA channel 1010 to check forcongestion and retrieves a buffer to store the packet at step 1566.Congestion is relieved by a WRED algorithm applied on the receive bufferring and the receive completion ring. If the receive DMA channel 1010 isnot congested, a buffer address is allocated according to the packetsize at step 1568. Packet data requests are issued as posted writes. Forzero copy flows, the buffers reflected in the receive completion ringbuffer 1042 only hold the packet headers.

The datapath engine 1042 fairly schedules the requests from the PortScheduler and the receive DMA channel control scheduler 1022 at step1570. The datapath engine 1024 then issues the requests to the memorysystem 130 at step 1572.

The receive completion ring buffer 1042 is updated after issuing thewrite requests for the entire packet at step 1574. The DMA statusregisters are updated every time that the receive completion ring buffer1042 is updated at step 1576. Software may poll the DMA status registersto determine if any packet has been received. When the receivecompletion ring queue length reaches a threshold or a timeout occurs, asdetermined at step 1578, the network interface unit 110 may update thereceive completion ring buffer 1042, and simultaneously, write the DMAstatus registers to a mailbox at step 1580. The software state is thenupdated and the logical device flag (LDF) may be raised at step 1582.The LDF may then lead to a system interrupt at step 1584. The networkinterface unit 110 maintains the consistency of the DMA status registersand the receive completion ring buffer 1042 as the status registersreflect the content of the receive completion ring in the memory system130 at step 1586.

FIG. 16 shows a flow chart of the movement of a packet transmitted bythe network interface unit 110. More specifically, the transmit DMAmodule 812 includes 32 transmit DMA channels 1120. Each transmit DMAchannel 1120 includes a transmit ring and a set of control and statusregisters. (See, e.g., FIG. 22.) Similar to the receive channels, eachtransmit channel supports multiple ranges. Addresses in the transmitring are subjected to a range checking translation based on the ranges.

The transmit ring includes a ring buffer in memory system 130. Softwareposts packets into the transmit ring at step 1610 and signals thetransmit DMA module 812 that packets have been queued at step 1612. Eachpacket is optimally built as a gather list. (The network interface unit110 ensures that the packet size does not exceed the maximum packet sizelimit.) When the transmit ring is not empty, the network interface unit110 prefetches the transmit ring entries into a per channel transmitring prefetch buffer 1142 at step 1614.

Any transmit DMA channel 1120 can be bound to one of the network portsby software. The binding of the ports is controlled by a mappingregister 1154 at the per port DRR scheduler 1150. The DRR scheduler 1150may be switched to a different channel on packet boundary. Thisswitching ensures that there will be no packet interleaving fromdifferent transmit DMA channels 1120 within a packet transfer. The DRRscheduler 1150 first acquires an available buffer for that port at step1620. If a buffer is available, a memory request is then issued at step1622. A buffer tag identifying the buffer is provided at step 1624 toenable reordering of potentially out of order read returns. The buffertag is linked to the request acknowledgement identifier for the packetat step 1626. The network ports are serviced in a round robin order viathe round robin scheduler 1152 at step 1630. Requests from differentports may be interleaved.

The transmit data requests and the prefetch request share the samedatapath to the memory system 130. The returned acknowledgement is firstprocessed at step 1640 to determine whether the returned acknowledgementis a prefetch or a transmit data. The transmit DMA module 812 hardwarealso supports checksum offload and CRC-32c offload. The transmitFIFO/Reorder Logic module 814 includes checksum and CRC-32cfunctionality.

When the entire packet has been received into the transmit DMA module812, the transfer of the packet is considered to be completed and thestate of the transmit DMA channel 1120 is updated via the associatedstatus register at step 1650. A 12-bit counter is initialized to zeroand tracks transmitted packets. Software polls the status registers todetermine the status. Alternately, software may mark a packet so that aninterrupt (if enabled) may be issued after the transmission of thepacket. Similar to the receive side, the network interface unit 110 mayupdate the state of the DMA channel to a predefined mailbox aftertransmitting a marked packet.

The transmit and receive portions of the network interface unit 110fairly share the same memory system interface 832.

Referring to FIG. 17, a flow chart of the operation of the portscheduler 1020 is shown. More specifically, because a port may besupporting 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps, a rate based scheduler is provided toensure no starvation. The port scheduler 1020 only switches port atpacket boundary and only schedules a port when the port FIFO has atleast one complete packet.

The number of queues is set at step 1710 as i:={0, 1, 2, 3}. The numberof queues corresponds to the number of ports within the networkinterface unit 110. Accordingly, for network interface unit 110 havingtwo ports, the number of queues would be set as i:={0, 1}.

Next, the port scheduler 1020 sets the deficit counters of queue i atstep 1712 as C_i:=deficit counters of queue i. Next, the port scheduler1020 sets an assigned weight for the queue i at step 1714 asW_i:=assigned weight for queue i. Next, the scheduler 1020 determineswhether a queue is eligible at step 1716 as i=last queue in i. A queueis eligible if the queue has a completed packet. The ‘next_queue_in_i’operation returns the first queue in i if the last queue is reached.Next, the port scheduler 1020 performs a select operation at step 1718.Next the port scheduler 1020 performs a loop operation at step 1720.

Referring to FIG. 18, a flow chart showing the operation of the selectoperation is shown. More specifically, the select operation 1718 startsby setting i equal to the next queue in i at step 1810. Next, the portscheduler 1020 sets C_i equal to the minimum value of C_i plus W_i orW_i at step 1812. Next, the port scheduler 1020 determines whether thequeue i is not eligible for scheduling at step 1814. Queue i is noteligible if C_i is less than or equal to zero. If queue i is noteligible, then the operation returns to step 1810. If queue i iseligible, then operation proceeds to the loop operation of step 1720.

Referring to FIG. 19, a flow chart showing the operation of the loopoperation is shown. More specifically, the loop operation 1720 starts byprocessing one packet from queue i at step 1910. Next the port scheduler1020 decrements C_i at step 1912. Next, the port scheduler 1020determines whether queue i is not eligible for scheduling at step 1914.Queue i is not eligible for scheduling if C_i is less than or equal tozero. If queue i is not eligible for scheduling, then the operationreturns to the select operation of step 1910. If queue i is eligible forscheduling then the operation proceeds to the select operation of 1720.C_i is decremented by the number of 16B blocks the packet contains. Apartial block is considered as one complete block. The port DRR weightregister programs the weight of a corresponding port.

Referring to FIG. 20, a flow chart showing the operation of a weightedrandom early discard (WRED) module 2000 is shown. A goal of congestionmanagement (such as the use of a weighted random early discard module2000) is to prevent overloading of the processing entity 120 and tofence off potential attacks that deplete system resources associatedwith network interfaces. The control mechanism for providing congestionmanagement is to discard packets randomly. The weighted random earlydiscard module 2000 provides the benefit of de-synchronizing the TCPslow start behavior and achieving an overall improvement in throughput.

The resources of a receive DMA channel are captured by two states: thereceive completion ring queue length and the number of posted buffers. ADMA channel is considered congested if there are a lot of packets queuedup but not enough buffers posted to the DMA channel. A method fordetermining congestion is to combine the two states. More specificallyif Q is a combined congestion measurement, thenQ=max Receive Completion Ring Queue Length−[S×Receive Block Ring QueueLength].

The receive block ring queue length is scaled up by a constant, S,because a block may store more than one packet.

A WRED function is characterized by two parameters, threshold andwindow. If the Q is larger than the threshold, then the packet issubjected to a WRED discard operation. The window value determines therange of Q above the threshold where the probabilistic discard isapplicable. If Q is larger than (Threshold+Window), the packet is alwaysdiscarded. Because it is desirable to protect existing connections andfence off potential SYN attacks, TCP SYN packets are subject to adifferent set of (Threshold, Window) pair.

More specifically, the operation of the WRED module 2000 starts byinitializing a plurality of values at step 2008. The values includesetting T=Threshold, W=Window and R=Random. Next, the WRED module 2000sets a value x equal to Q−T at step 2010. Next, the WRED module 2000determines whether x is less than 0 at step 2012. If x is less thanzero, then the operation of the module exits. If x is not less thanzero, then the WRED module 2000 obtains a random number between 0 and 1at step 2014. Next, the WRED module 2000 determines whether an integervalue of R*W is less than x at step 2016. If the integer value is lessthan x, then the packet is discarded at step 2018. If the value is notless than x, then the operation of the module completes.

In one embodiment, the random number is implemented with a 16 bit linearfeedback shift register (LFSR) with polynomial such asX16+X5+X3+X2+1

Network Interface Unit Data Movement Profiles

The network interface unit 110 provides performance based onparallelism, selective offloading of data movement and pipelined usageof an I/O interface. The network interface unit 110 selectively usesdirect virtual memory access (DVMA) and physical DMA models. The networkinterface unit 110 provides partitionable control and data path (via,e.g., hypervisor partitions). The network interface unit 110 providespacket classification for partitions, services and flow identification.The network interface unit 110 is multi-ported for multi-homing, bladearchitectures and look aside applications.

The network interface unit 110 receives and transmits data movementprofiles as described below. More specifically, the receive datamovement profile provides that DMA writes are performed in up to 512byte posted write transactions, that there are a plurality of pipelinedwrite transitions per DMA channel, that the total number of pipelinedwrite transactions is determined based upon I/O and memory latencycharacteristics, that the receive DMA write PCI-Express transactionshave byte granularity and that most DMA writes are initiated withrelaxed ordering. The read data movement profile provides for aplurality of pipelined DMA read requests per DMA channel, that the totalnumber of pipelined DMA read requests across channels is determinedbased upon I/O and memory latency characteristics, that each transmitDMA read request can be up to 2 K bytes, that the network interface unit110 tries to request an entire packet or 2k whichever is smaller, thatthe DMA read completions can be partial, but in order for a givenrequest, that the network interface unit 110 handles interleaved DMAread completions for outstanding requests, and that the networkinterface unit 110 preserves packet ordering per DMA channel despiterequest or completion reordering. It will be appreciated that any of thedata movement profiles may be adjusted based upon the I/O and memorylatency characteristics associated within the network system.

DMA channels, which include both receive DMA channels 1010 and transmitDMA channels 1120, are the basic constructs for queuing, and forenabling parallelism in servicing network interface units 110 fromdifferent processing entities 120. Thus, DMA channels are servicedindependently, thereby avoiding the overhead of mutual exclusion whenmanaging transmit and receive queues. In one embodiment, receive zerocopy (i.e., TCP reassembly) is associated with each of the DMA channelsbut does not consume additional DMA channels. Translation tables are notconsidered separate channels.

The transmit DMA channels 1120 and receive DMA channels 1010 eachinclude respective kick registers which are used via PIO posted writesto update network interface units 110 regarding how far the hardware mayadvance on each ring. Completion registers, analogously indicate to thesoftware how far the hardware has advanced, while avoiding descriptorwritebacks.

All PIO registers associated with the operation of a DMA channel areseparable into pages. Thus, the DMA channels may be managed by their ownpartitions. The PIO registers, and thus the DMA channels, are groupableso that an arbitrary ensemble of DMA channels can be placed in a singlepartition.

Both the transmit DMA channels 1120 and the receive DMA channels 1010cache at least a cache line worth of fetched descriptors to minimizedescriptor memory accesses. Similarly, completion updates are batched tofill a cache line whenever possible. Every DMA channel includes acorresponding polling register. The polling register reflects the stateof the channel (not empty completion) so that the network interface unit110 can use a programmable I/O read operation to the polling register.

Referring to FIG. 21, a receive DMA channel 1010 includes a receivedescriptor ring 2110 and a receive completion ring 2112. The receivedescriptor ring 2110 holds free buffer pointers to blocks of buffers ofpre-defined size, typically an operating system page size or a multipleof an operating system page size. Buffer consumption granularitydiscriminates packet lengths based on three ranges, small, large orjumbo, which are defined by SMALL_PACKET_SIZE, LARGE_PACKET_SIZE,JUMBO_PACKET_SIZE elements, respectively. More specifically, with thesmall packet length range the length of the packet is less than thevalue defined by the SMALL_PACKET_SIZE element; with the large packetlength range, the length of the packet is greater than the value definedby the SMALL_PACKET_SIZE element and less than or equal to the valuedefined by the LARGE_PACKET_SIZE element; and, with a jumbo packetlength range, the length of the packet is greater than the value definedby the LARGE_PACKET_SIZE element and less than or equal to the valuedefined by JUMBO_PACKET_SIZE element.

At any time, the receive DMA channel 1010 uses three free bufferpointers cached from its descriptor ring, one buffer is carved up forsmall packets, another buffer for large packets, and a third buffer forjumbo packets. The PACKET_SIZE thresholds are coarsely programmable perchannel and determine the number of packets per buffer and the fixedreceive buffer sub-divisions where packets may start. The respectivepacket pointers are posted to the channel's receive completion ring2112.

The receive completion ring 2112 therefore defines the order of packetarrival for the receive DMA channel 1010 corresponding to the completionring. Jumbo packets may exceed the buffer size by spilling over into asecond buffer. Two pointers per packet are posted to the receivecompletion ring 2112 in the case of spillover.

For each receive DMA channel 1010, the receive DMA channel contextincludes a plurality of elements. More specifically, each receive DMAchannel includes a buffer size element; a SMALL_PACKET_SIZE element; aLARGE_PACKET_SIZE element; a JUMBO_PACKET_SIZE element; a receivedescriptor ring start pointer element; a receive descriptor ring sizeelement; a receive descriptor ring head pointer element; a receive kickregister element; a receive descriptor ring tail pointer element; areceive completion ring start pointer element; a receive completion ringsize element; a receive completion ring head pointer element; a receivecompletion tail pointer element; a receive buffer pointer for SMALLelement; a receive Buffer pointer for LARGE element; a receive Pollingregister element (reflects completion ring queue depth, i.e. thedistance between completion head and tail register values); and WREDregister elements (thresholds, discard statistics).

The completion ring size is programmed by software to be larger than thedescriptor ring size. To accommodate small packet workloads, the ratiobetween the ring sizes is at least (Buffer size/SMALL_PACKET_SIZE).

Referring to FIG. 22, a transmit DMA channel 1120 includes a singletransmit descriptor ring 2210 holding buffer pointers for new packets tobe transmitted. Each transmit DMA channel 1120 is associated viaregister programming with one of the MAC ports, or one trunk when linkaggregation is used. Multiple DMA channels may be associated with asingle MAC port. Transmit gather is supported, i.e., a packet may spanan arbitrary number of buffers.

A transmit operation executes in open loop mode (i.e., with nointerrupts) whenever possible. Complete descriptor removal is scheduledat the end of new packet queuing, or periodic interrupts requested atenqueuing time, but there is no need to generate an interrupt for everypacket completion or to service the transmit process in any form for thetransmit process to make progress.

For each transmit DMA channel 1120, the transmit DMA channel contextincludes a plurality of elements. More specifically, each transmit DMAchannel context includes a transmit descriptor ring start pointerelement; a transmit descriptor ring size element; a transmit descriptorring head pointer element; a transmit kick register element; a transmitdescriptor ring tail pointer element; a transmit completion registerelement; and, a transmit Polling register element (reflects descriptorring queue depth, i.e. Distance between Head and Tail register values).

The descriptor structures defining the transmit DMA channels 1120 arevery simple so that the descriptor structures can efficiently correspondto the DVMA structures without unnecessary input output memorymanagement unit (IOMMU) thrashing for network interface units.

With the other embodiment of the integrated network interface unit 1300,the memory accesses proceed directly to a memory system 130 (aftertranslating virtual addresses to physical address within the four portnetwork interface unit) but without going through any bridge or IOMMU.Memory accesses proceeding directly to a memory system 130 allowssuperior latency and additional I/O bandwidth, as networking does notcompete with any other I/O.

Another subtlety of direct memory interface in the integrated networkinterface unit 1300 is that memory accesses may complete in arbitraryorder when considering multiple banks. A reorder function correlates DMAmemory completions, and serializes some operations whenever necessary(either via descriptor update after DMA WR, or polling register updateafter DMA WR).

Referring to FIG. 23, a block diagram of the packet classificationhierarchy is shown. The packet classification hierarchy which isprovided by the packet classifier module 818 provides several receivepacket classification primitives. These receive packet classificationprimitives include virtualization, traffic spreading, perfect ternarymatches, and imperfect and perfect flow matching.

More specifically, the virtualization packet classification primitivedetermines the partition to be used for a given receive packet.Virtualization allows multiple partitions to co-exist within a givennetwork interface unit 110 or even a given port within a networkinterface unit 110 while keeping strict separation of DMA channels andtheir corresponding processing resources. The shared parts of thenetwork interface unit 110 are limited to the cable connected to thenetwork interface unit 110, the MAC module 830, and the receive packetFIFOs 816 servicing the port. The cable, the MAC module 830 and thereceive packet FIFOs 816 provide continuous packet service (i.e., nostalls or blocking). Virtualization can be based on VLANS, MACaddresses, or service addresses such as IP addresses or TCP/UDP ports.Virtualization essentially selects a group of receive DMA channels 1010as the set of channels where a packet may end up regardless of all othertraffic spreading and classification criteria.

The traffic spreading classification primitive is an efficient way ofseparating traffic statically into multiple queues. Traffic spreadingclassification preserves affinity as long as the parser is sophisticatedenough to ignore all mutable header fields. The implementation oftraffic spreading is based on pre-defined packet classes and a hashfunction applied over a programmable set of header fields. The hashfunction can be tweaked by programming its initial value. The trafficspreading function can consider or ignore the ingress port, enablingdifferent or identical spreading patterns for different ports.

The perfect ternary match classification primitive is the ultimateclassification, where the packet can be associated with flows, or withwild-carded entries representing services, addresses, virtualizedpartitions, etc. The implementation of perfect match is based on a TCAMmatch, and is therefore limited in depth. The TCAM value is generallyintended to match layer 3 and layer 4 fields for Internet Protocolversion 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), and also bindlayer 2 virtualization to layers 3 and 4 by keying group numbers inaddition to IP headers and transport headers.

The flow matching classification primitive is the association of packetsto pre-inserted flows within a large hash table. The hash entries can beused for perfect or imperfect binary matches, where a perfect matchconsumes four times the space of an imperfect match. Therefore, ingeneral, there is a low but finite probability of having a false match,and also of not being able to insert the desired flow for a specificpacket. Flow matching is used for maintaining flow associations to DMAchannels for a large number of connections (for example for operatingsystem style hardware classification) as well as zero copy flows. Theimplementation of flow matching is based on hashing into the hash table950. In the case of zero copy flows, regardless of the match type, thetranslation table stage does again a full 5-tuple comparison thuseliminating the risk of false matches. “Don't care” bits for flowmatching are masked by a class filter before the hashing function, andare an attribute of the class, rather than the individual entry.

Populating the hash table 950 is optional and software functions withscenarios where the hash table 950 is or is not populated. Furthermore,the hash table 950 is partitionable into a plurality of separate tables(e.g., four separate tables), so that separate partitions can managetheir own flows or connections directly without having to serializeaccess or invoke hypervisor calls in flow setup.

There are a plurality of relationships between the variousclassification primitives. More specifically layer 2 virtualizationresults (MAC DA, VLAN) can be factored into the TCAM match via the Group# so that IP addresses/TCP/UDP ports are restricted to VLANs, ingressports, and MAC addresses. Also, TCAM matches and flow matches arelargely independent, except that the TCAM match virtualizationdetermines which hash table partition to search. The TCAM matchvirtualization results in some serialization between the searches. TheTCAM and flow matches are merged, allowing TCAM entries to override ordefer to flow matches. The flow match key is not controllable by theTCAM match, and its construction and hash computation may be overlappedwith the TCAM search. The ingress port is considered part of all matchesand tables so that different policies can be applied across differentports. The flow match and the traffic spreading function use the samekey into the hash function. Key masking and assembly is programmable.

The tables have various sizes and roles. For example, the MAC tablevirtualizes based on the MAC Address index provided by the MAC blocks(e.g., 4 bits) and the ingress port number (e.g., 2 bits). The output ofthe MAC table is a group # (e.g., 4 bits) and a MAC_Dominates signal tocontrol how to merge this result with the VLAN table result. The VLANtable virtualizes based on VLAN IDs (e.g., 12 bits) and a VLAN_Dominatessignal to control how to merge this result. The group tables include 16sets of receive DMA channels grouped for virtualization. The receive DMAchannels are programmed into one of the group tables. All 32 entries ofa group table are filled with valid receive DMA channel numbers. ReceiveDMA channels are written more than once per group table if necessary tofill the table.

Both transmit and receive functions operate as store and forward in andout of the corresponding FIFO. There are fields stored with the packetFIFOs used for control purposes, and there are also dedicated controlstructures in the form of FIFOs.

Within the receive path, receive packet FIFOs arbitrate for DMA channelscheduling on packet boundaries. The packet at the head of a givenreceive packet FIFO determines the DMA channel number to use for thepacket.

Translation table lookups represent the longest latency step of ingressprocessing. The pipeline design assumes that every packet goes throughtranslation at ingress, and overlaps the translation with data flowinginto the Receive packet FIFO.

Some receive control information is stored in the receive buffers alongwith the receive packets while other fields are deposited into thedescriptors themselves. Information consumed by the driver goes todescriptors, and information needed above the driver stays in thebuffer.

In addition, receive buffers accommodate a number of reserved locationsper buffer to be used by software. The number is programmable perchannel and up to 86 bytes. Receive packets using TCP re-assembly derivetheir DMA addresses from the translation result in the form of a pair of(address, length) pairs with arbitrary byte granularity.

Within the transmit path, there is one FIFO per MAC port. Packets areread from the head of the FIFO into the MAC port only when a full packetis ready (for checksum insertion purposes). Packets may be written ininterleaved fashion into the transmit FIFO to accommodate out of ordermemory read completions. The transmit reorder module 852 produces thetransmit FIFO address location for writing memory read (MEM RD)completions based on the transaction ID, address, byte count, and byteenables of the completion. A packet may require more than one requestand therefore the packet may consume multiple transaction IDs. Thetransmit reorder module 852 handles as many transaction IDs as thenumber of pipelined MEM RD requests issued by the network interface unit110. Completions are of arbitrary size up to Max_Payload_Size for thePCI-Express receive direction.

The transmit reorder module 852 therefore manages the re-assembly ofcompletions at insertion time into Transmit FIFOs 850, and in theprocess of doing so enforces a network packet order per MAC/DMA channelthat is identical to the memory read request order for the transmit DMAchannel 812.

The memory read request order is derived from the packet descriptororder of each transmit DMA channel 1120, with the freedom to scheduleacross transmit DMA channels 1120 with no order constraints.

The transmit reorder module 852 also determines when a given packet iscompletely written into the transmit FIFO 850 by determining that allthe packet requests are completely satisfied. For simplicity purposesthe request order is enforced within a transmit FIFO 850 even forrequests from different transmit DMA channels 1120.

TCP checksum insertion is performed by maintaining partial checksums perpackets in the transmit reorder module 852 and using the additiveproperty of the 1's complement checksum to overcome completioninterleaving.

For the integrated network interface unit 1300, the reorder module 852is simplified because MEM RD completions are of fixed size, and possiblya smaller number of outstanding requests are pipelined.

The data buffering includes a plurality of discard policies. Morespecifically, the discard policy for a transmit operation is that thereis not congestive discard in the transmit data path because the fourport network interface unit only requests from memory packets that fitin the corresponding Transmit FIFO.

The discard policy for a receive is that congestive discard for Receiveoccurs under several scenarios at the boundary between a receive FIFOmodule 816 and a receive DMA channel 1010. Accordingly, the receive FIFOmodule 816 is always serviced, be it by the receive DMA channel 1010corresponding to the packet at the head of the receive FIFO module 816,or by discarding from the head of the receive FIFO module 816. Packetsare never backpressured at the receive FIFO module 816. All discardoperations are on packet boundaries.

There are a plurality of different scenarios that may trigger packetdiscard. More specifically, a DMA congestion scenario where no buffer isposted to the descriptor ring at the time the packet is at the head ofits receive FIFO module 816 may trigger packet discard. A DMA disabledscenario where a receive DMA channel 1010 is disabled at the time thepacket is at the head of its receive FIFO module 816 may trigger packetdiscard. A random early discard (RED) scenario which is implemented perreceive DMA channel 1010 which determines that queue length requirespacket discard, and randomizer determines that the next packet is thevictim. A classifier triggered scenario when the packet classifier 818indicates a packet is to be dropped; the packet is dropped from the headof the receive FIFO module 816. The classification result which iscarried by the receive control FIFO 862 includes the packet dropindication. A late discard scenario occurs in cases of congestion in themiddle of the packet, or packet malfunction (Length or CRC based)signaled by the MAC at the end of a packet, packet discard is marked onthe FIFO ingress side, possibly by rewriting the first receive packetFIFO 860 with a special marker sequence. The design may also reclaimmost of the offending packet's FIFO locations used so far by rewindingthe ingress pointer.

Packet drop at the receive packet FIFO tail also occurs when the receivepacket FIFO 860 fills. For example, for lookup congestion, if the packetclassifier 818 fails to keep up with averaged packet rate (averaged bythe receive packet FIFO depth), the receive control FIFO 862 is updatedwith results at a slower rate than the receive packet FIFO 860. Shouldthe receive packet FIFO fill, the affected packet is dropped on the FIFOingress side by reclaiming the locations used so far.

The hypervisor 312 adds a level of indirection to the physical addressspace by introducing real addresses. Real addresses are unique perpartition, but only physical addresses are system unique. There are twotypes of hypervisor hooks with the address usage of network interfaceunits. These two hooks include any slave access to network interfaceunit registers intended to be directly manipulated by software in thepartition without the hypervisor 312 (or equivalent) coordination isgrouped into pages that the network system memory management unit canmap separately and any DMA access originated from network interfaceunits apply an address relocation mapping based on a per partitionoffset and range limit. The offset and limit values are programmablethrough yet another partition different from the partition that postsaddresses to the DMA channel.

The level of indirection can be used in a hypervisor environment toachieve full partition isolation. This level of indirection can also beused in non-partitioned environments to avoid having to serialize accessto shared resources in the data path. Providing a level of indirectionis valuable to enable scalable performance.

The network interface unit 110 includes a plurality of register groups.These register groups include a MAC/PCS register group, a classificationregister group, a virtualized register group, transmit and receive DMAregister groups, a PCI configuration space register group, an interruptstatus and control register group, a partition control register group,and an additional control register group.

The register structure and event definition relies on separatingdatapath interrupt events so that the events can be mapped univocally tostrands or processors, regardless of whether the processors enableinterrupts, poll, or yield on an event register load.

The actual event signaling for network interface units 110 is based oninterrupt messages (MSIs) to different addresses per target. In theintegrated network interface unit, the event signaling is done towards aset of interrupt registers placed close to the processor core.

Network System Software Stack

Referring again to FIG. 4, the interface unit device driver 420 assistsan operating system 430 with throughput, connection setup and teardown.While higher bandwidth data rates may saturate the network stacks on asingle processor, the network system helps to achieve throughputnetworking by distributing the processing.

The network system device driver 420 programs the packet classifier 818for identification of flows or connections to the appropriate processorentities 120. The network interface unit packet classifier 818 isprogrammed to place well defined flows on the appropriate DMA channel.

A model of a flow can occur in a single stage or multiple stages, sothat different processing entities 120 can service different receivechannels. A single stage is when a packet is received, is classified asa flow, and sent to the software stack for processing without furthercontext switching. Multiple stages is when packets which are classifiedas flows are queued and then some other thread or operating systementity is informed to process the packets at some other time.

The operating system 430 creates a queue instance for each processorplus a thread with affinity to that processor entity 120. By providingflow affinity to a processor entity 120, packet ordering is maintainedon receive flows. Also, maintaining affinity of receive and transmitpackets that belong to the same connection enables better network systemperformance by providing the same context, no processor cross-calls andkeeps the caches “warm”.

The network system software stack 410 migrates flows to insure thatreceive and transmit affinity is maintained. More specifically, thenetwork system software stack 410 migrates receive flows by programmingflow tables. The network system software stack 410 migrates transmitflows by computing the same hash value for a transmit as the networkinterface unit 110.

The connection to a processor affinity is controlled by the operatingsystem 430, with a network interface unit 110 and the network interfaceunit device driver 420 following suit. There are at least twoalternatives for controlling the affinity. In one alternative, theoperating system 430 presently associates each flow with the processingentity 120 that creates the flow either at “open” or at “accept” time.In this case, the flow to DMA channel mapping of a connection is passedto the network interface unit 110 and associated network system softwareand stored in the hash tables 950 for use by the receive packetclassifier 818. The other alternative is based on a general fanouttechnique defined by the operating system 430 and does not use a flowtable entry. The network interface unit device driver 420 can be amulti-threaded driver with single thread access to data structures.

The network system software stack 410 exploits the capabilities of thenetwork interface unit 110. The packet classifier 818 is optionallyprogrammed to take into account the ingress port and VLAN tag of thepacket. This programming allows multiple network interface units 110 tobe under the network system software stack 410.

Referring to FIG. 24, a flow diagram of a receive flow between a networkinterface unit and a network system software stack 410 is shown. Whenthe device driver 420 is functioning on the receive side with multipleprocessor receives, the network interface unit 110 is programmed toprovide hash based receive packets spreading which sends different IPpackets to different DMA channels. The network interface unit packetheader parsing uses source and destination IP addresses, and the TCPport numbers, (e.g., TCP 5-tuples). These fields along with the port andVLAN uniquely identify a flow. Hashing is one of many ways to spreadload.

When the network interface unit 110 is functioning in an interruptmodel, when a packet is received, it generates an interrupt, subject tointerrupt coalescing criteria. Interrupts are used to indicate to aprocessor entity 120 that there are packets ready for processing. In thepolling mechanism, reads across the I/O bus 112 are performed todetermine whether there are packets to be processed.

The network interface unit 110 includes two modes for processing thereceived packets. A standard interrupt based mode is controlled via thedevice driver 420 and the second polled based mode that is controlled bythe ULP. The ULP (in this case the operating system 430) exploits theappropriate mode to meet certain performance goals. Flows that have beenclassified as exact matches by the combination of the network interfaceunit packet classifier 818 and the device driver 420 are sent directlyto the operating system 430 within the receive interrupt context orqueued and pulled via polled queue threads. In either case, the networkinterface unit packet classifier 818 helps map particular flows to thesame processing entity 120.

An interrupt coalescing feature per receive descriptor can providemultiple packet processing and chaining. On the interrupt module, thedevice driver 420 registers the interrupt service routine with theoperating system 430 which then tries to spread the processing todifferent processing entities 120. The device driver 420 configures thenetwork interface unit 110 to exploit the DMA channels, translationtable, buffer management, and the packet classifier.

On the polled mode module, the queue thread or another thread pullspackets out of the receive queue. The polled mode module includesinterfaces between the ULP and the network interface unit 110.

The interface to the network interface unit device driver 420 is viaeither a device driver specific interface or via an operating systemframework.

For packets which are not classified appropriately, the device driver420 uses a standard operating system interface.

The network interface unit 110 places a number of packets into each pagesized buffer by dividing the buffer into multiple packet buffers.Depending on packet size distribution, buffers may be returned in adifferent order than they were placed on the descriptor ring. Descriptorand completion ring processing is handled in the interrupt handler orinvoked from the thread model.

Referring to FIG. 25, the flow of a transmit flow between a networkinterface unit and a network system software stack 410 is shown. Whenthe device driver 420 is functioning at the transmit side, the devicedriver 420 provides one of two approaches, an IP queue fanout approachand a hash table approach.

The IP queue fanout approach uses a fanout element to potentially helpprovide better affinity between transmit and receive side flowprocessing. If a network function uses the same hash as the networkinterface unit packet classifier 818, then the operating system 430distributes “open” or “accept” connections to the same queue as thenetwork interface unit packet classifier 818.

The fanout approach provides processor affinity to flows/connectionswithout the hash table. All incoming flows classified by the networkinterface unit packet classifier 818 come to the operating system 430 onthe same processing entity 120. So, the accept connection function usesthe same queue and the “open” connection function uses the hashalgorithm to fan the packet out to the right queue. Thus, the queuefanout approach enables the network interface unit device driver 420 andthe operating system 430 to exploit the affinity of a flow/connection toa particular processing entity 120.

The hash table approach uses a mechanism for load balancing the IPpackets to the appropriate processing entity 120 based on transmitaffinity. If the operating system 430 wants to drive the affinity from atransmit perspective, then the operating system 430 exploits the hashtable interface provided by the network interface unit 110. Theapplication sourcing data running on a particular processing entity 120(e.g., CPU#n) results in the network interface unit device driver 420programming the hash table 950 so that received packets for that floware sent to the particular processing entity 120 (e.g., CPU#n). The hashtable 950 provides the capabilities to manage a large number (e.g., fourmillion) of flows. Each entry in the hash table 950 allows a flow tohave a well defined processing entity 120 plus some pointer, e.g., apointer to the connection structure.

The hash table approach provides interfaces which are defined betweenthe operating system 430 and the device driver 420 to program the hashtable 950. Before sending out a TCP SYN packet for active open or beforesending TCP SYN ACK or TCP ACK, the entries in the hash table 950 areupdated according to the processing entity 120 on which the connectionis being initiated or terminated as the case may be. Updating the hashtable allows subsequent packets for that flow to come to the sameprocessing entity 120. The entries in the flow are inserted before thepacket is sent on the wire (i.e., sent onto the network).

One feature of the network interface unit 110 on the transmit side isthe support for multiple transmit descriptor rings per port, allowingmultiple threads to send packets concurrently to the same port and evenuse some of the queues for qualities of service (QOS) for outboundtraffic. A transmit descriptor is associated with a particular VLAN andat during the configuration of the network interface unit 110. Thenetwork interface unit 110 ensures that a given flow is alwaysassociated with the same transmit descriptor ring.

There are two approaches for sending a flow to a given port, a devicedriver approach and an operating system defined approach. With thedevice driver approach, the device driver 420 controls the fanning outof the flows to a given transmit descriptor. With the operating systemdefined approach, an API is defined which allows informing the devicedriver 420 of which transmit descriptor to use. With either approach,the same flow always uses the same descriptor. Thus, multiple flows cancome concurrently into the device driver 420 on different transmitdescriptors.

The device driver 420 performs the spreading of the flows that come downfrom the operating system 430. The device driver 420 includes a mapidentifying which physical ports to which transmit queues. The devicedriver approach identifies the transmit descriptor by a hashingalgorithm and distributes the packets to different descriptors but tiedto the same port. The attachment on which the packet comes to the devicedriver 420 of operating system parameter is used to identify the port.Flow control is defined for the operating system programming interface.If all transmit descriptors that are tied to the given ports are locked,then the device driver 420 informs the operating system 430 to queue thepackets in its queue. This helps in alleviating the lock connectionissue associated in a multiprocessing environment.

Thus, because multiple flows can be transmitted on the same port, alltransmit descriptors associated with that port could be busy. The locksare mainly for preventing the descriptor entries from being used by twoseparate threads and are desirable to be held for a very short duration.

If the operating system 430 wants to fan out the packets to differentdescriptors then the operating system 430 has to ensure that the sameflow always uses the same transmit descriptor. The operating system 430provides the port and the appropriate transmit descriptor over which theflow needs to go. The operating system API also adheres to the flowcontrol push back from the device driver 420 in case the transmitdescriptors are already in use.

Other Embodiments

The present invention is well adapted to attain the advantages mentionedas well as others inherent therein. While the present invention has beendepicted, described, and is defined by reference to particularembodiments of the invention, such references do not imply a limitationon the invention, and no such limitation is to be inferred. Theinvention is capable of considerable modification, alteration, andequivalents in form and function, as will occur to those ordinarilyskilled in the pertinent arts. The depicted and described embodimentsare examples only, and are not exhaustive of the scope of the invention.

For example, while particular architectures are set forth with respectto the network system and the network interface unit, it will beappreciated that variations within these architectures are within thescope of the present invention. Also, while particular packet flowdescriptions are set forth, it will be appreciated that variationswithin the packet flow are within the scope of the present invention.

Also for example, the above-discussed embodiments include modules andunits that perform certain tasks. The modules and units discussed hereinmay include hardware modules or software modules. The hardware modulesmay be implemented within custom circuitry or via some form ofprogrammable logic device. The software modules may include script,batch, or other executable files. The modules may be stored on amachine-readable or computer-readable storage medium such as a diskdrive. Storage devices used for storing software modules in accordancewith an embodiment of the invention may be magnetic floppy disks, harddisks, or optical discs such as CD-ROMs or CD-Rs, for example. A storagedevice used for storing firmware or hardware modules in accordance withan embodiment of the invention may also include a semiconductor-basedmemory, which may be permanently, removably or remotely coupled to amicroprocessor/memory system. Thus, the modules may be stored within acomputer system memory to configure the computer system to perform thefunctions of the module. Other new and various types ofcomputer-readable storage media may be used to store the modulesdiscussed herein. Additionally, those skilled in the art will recognizethat the separation of functionality into modules and units is forillustrative purposes. Alternative embodiments may merge thefunctionality of multiple modules or units into a single module or unitor may impose an alternate decomposition of functionality of modules orunits. For example, a software module for calling sub-modules may bedecomposed so that each sub-module performs its function and passescontrol directly to another sub-module.

Consequently, the invention is intended to be limited only by the spiritand scope of the appended claims, giving full cognizance to equivalentsin all respects.

1. A network system having a plurality of processing partitionscomprising: a network interface unit coupled to a plurality ofprocessing entities, the network interface unit including a plurality ofmemory access channels, the plurality of memory access channels beingvirtualized, the network interface unit being shared among the pluralityof processing partitions.
 2. The network system of claim 1 wherein thememory access channels comprise separate buffering resources within thenetwork system.
 3. The network system of claim 1 wherein memory accesschannels operate on separate buffering resources within the processingpartitions.
 4. The network system of claim 1 wherein a first set of theplurality of memory access channels are associated with a firstprocessing partition; and, a second set of the plurality of memoryaccess channels are associated with a second processing partition. 5.The network system of claim 4 further comprising: a network interfacesoftware stack, the network interface software stack providing access tothe network interface, and wherein, various memory access channels areassociated with corresponding processing entities via the networkinterface software stack.
 6. The network system of claim 5 wherein: thenetwork system software stack includes a plurality of independentoperating system images.
 7. The network system of claim 6 furthercomprising: a partition management module, the partition managementmodule virtualizing network system resources so as to allow simultaneousoperation of the plurality of independent operating systems sharing thenetwork system.
 8. The network system of claim 6 wherein: each of theplurality of independent operating systems includes one or moreinstantiations of a network interface unit device driver.
 9. The networksystem of claim 8 wherein memory access channels are isolated andexclusively controlled by an instantiation of a network interface unitdevice driver executing within a well defined partition.
 10. The networksystem of claim 9 wherein memory access channels are confined in theirmemory access scope to well defined memory regions; and where the memoryregions accessible by a memory channel are not directly programmable bythe partition associated with said memory channel.
 11. The networksystem of claim 10 where memory access channels are subject to addressrange checking and relocation for every access to a processing partitionmemory.
 12. A method for providing a network system with a plurality ofprocessing partitions comprising: providing a network interface unitcoupled to a plurality of processing entities, the network interfaceunit including a plurality of memory access channels, virtualizing theplurality of memory access channels; and, sharing the network interfaceunit among the plurality of processing partitions.
 13. The method ofclaim 12 wherein the memory access channels comprise separate bufferingresources within the network system.
 14. The method of claim 12 furthercomprising operating the memory access channels on separate bufferingresources within the processing partitions.
 15. The method of claim 12further comprising associating a first set of the plurality of memoryaccess channels with a first processing partition; and, associating asecond set of the plurality of memory access channels with a secondprocessing partition.
 16. The method of claim 15 further comprising:providing a network interface software stack, providing access to thenetwork interface via the network interface software stack, andassociating various memory access channels with corresponding processingentities via the network interface software stack.
 17. The method ofclaim 16 wherein: the network system software stack includes a pluralityof independent operating system images.
 18. The method of claim 17further comprising: providing a partition management module,virtualizing network system resources with the partition managementmodule so as to allow simultaneous operation of the plurality ofindependent operating systems sharing the network system.
 19. The methodof claim 17 wherein: each of the plurality of independent operatingsystems includes one or more instantiations of a network interface unitdevice driver.
 20. The method of claim 19 wherein memory access channelsare isolated and exclusively controlled by an instantiation of a networkinterface unit device driver executing within a well defined partition.21. The method of claim 20 further comprising confining memory accesschannels in their memory access scope to well defined memory regions;and where the memory regions accessible by a memory channel are notdirectly programmable by the partition associated with said memorychannel.
 22. The method of claim 21 further comprising performingaddress range checking and relocation on the memory access channels forevery access to a processing partition memory.